Rob & Chloe Alper Juno

It’s fairly infrequent that a movie soundtrack features an original song that I can actually get behind. Most of the time, soundtracks are used as a cheap opportunity to give a fairly unknown artist the ol’ major label bump or worse, to give a lackluster film some extra pop culture support. And while Maniac isn’t a complete exception to this, the film does seem to take an entirely different approach to its usage of schmaltzy pop capital and doesn’t necessarily sacrifice quality for the sake of appeal. After all, can’t pop music be enjoyable, accessible, and original all at the same time? Well, sometimes, but that’s not the point. The point is that Juno is a wonderfully jagged piece of pure electro-pop candy.  Everything from Rob’s throbbing disco synths to Chloe Alper’s excessively effusive soprano ooze early ‘80s electronicism, but with a modern sheen and a dynamic that’s not completely stuck in the genre’s inertly self-indulgent ways. It’s not quite a guilty pleasure of mine simply because I don’t feel at all guilty for listening to it, but its definitely not something you’d expect to enjoy as much after multiple listens. Yet here I am, gushing over it in the Singles Blog. Must be worth a listen or two, right?